


Entanglement

by CherFleur



Series: SGA drabble fic [8]
Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Atlantis Avatar - Freeform, Atlas - Freeform, Episode Related, Gen, Sentient Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22812769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: The dwindling of what was had been swift and final. Atlantis was used to this, to the many endings and beginnings.It had been a rather long time, however, since an ending had been turned into a continuation, instead.
Relationships: Atlantis & Athosians, Atlantis & Atlantis Expedition Member(s), Atlantis & Chaya Sar
Series: SGA drabble fic [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616983
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

> Uh. So, I didn't really like this episode in canon, and it felt super weird and kinda forced? So I fixed it and gave Chaya some character depth that makes more sense than her randomly being Ori-ified and trapped in the Pegasus galaxy.
> 
> Grammar and typos!

Atlantis had… been peripherally aware of the imprisoned one. Of the Pegasus Born member of the Third Ones who had loved and grieved after Ascension and done the unthinkable.

She had intervened.

Beings of Energy such as the Ascended former Lanteans strictly controlled each other. They thought themselves _above_ involvement and interaction with the physical plane of existence. They remembered when the imprisoned one had leapt forward; her Descendants were being slaughtered by the Wraith that _her people_ had created.

They remembered, because she had been among the first to Descend as well.

She had Ascended and Descended, over and over, until they forbid it.

And so, they had trapped her.

For all the things that they _had_ done to Atlantis over the millennia, they had never been able to trap them. To entangle their Existence that was so much greater than their own could ever be, simply by age and experience alone.

So, in this, Atlas was saddened by her circumstances. The freedom stripped from her.

That didn't mean that they weren't _irked_ by her blatant entry into their shell, no matter that she had been invited.

Petty, they were not, but they were still displeased with the _last_ Ascended being who had tried to interfere with them.

Atlas was standing in the control center above the ST, features expressionless as they stared down at the new arrival. They had logged the tunnel that had been connected to them via her prison world, but it had been in adjacent processes. Not until they had heard Rodney wildly exclaiming that the planet _must_ have a spare ZPM – an Energy Storing Crystal as they knew it – that they concluded that things would get complicated.

They generally did when it involved Rodney trying to help Atlantis get a better, more reliable power supply. While they appreciated this, their engineer tended to get a little… overzealous.

As such, the Atlas Avatar stood watch over their new ones as Chaya Sar stepped through the energy barrier they had put in place. It twined around her form, keeping her solid when before she could have dispersed herself into the ether. Could be pulled back to that planet which empowered and entrapped her.

She stumbled, Sheppard catching her elbow even as her wide eyes flew up to stare at Atlas with something like fear. Something like apprehension.

But also… hmm.

They would keep an eye on that little kernel of hope.

While she hadn’t been a part of those who had abandoned Atlantis in a mass exodus, Chaya had left of her own volition. Yes, she was trapped and changing into something she likely had never intended, becoming more and more like the Ori the Third Ones had repudiated. Yes, she had Descended with the intent to help when others would not, but she had still left _them_.

It… Atlantis was patient. Could be kind.

They could not mistake the wariness they felt for anything other than what it was; they did not wish to be hurt again.

Forgiveness could perhaps be an option but they never _, ever_ , forgot.

~*~

“Hello, child.”

Breath catching, the trapped Third One turned towards them, physical heart rapidly thumping with emotion. The children had been watching, and the adult Athosians in turn, as she’d nearly succumbed to nostalgia several times. Fingertips running over their walls, crystals lighting with a resonance that made Atlantis ache with memory.

They had loved the Third Ones for a long time. There was no erasing that, even if they’d wanted to.

“Hello,” she swallowed, hands near thoughtlessly pressing into the artistic curve of the decorative railing, trailing the patterns. “You are… Atlas?”

“I am.”

Light flickered under her skin momentarily, tinged with joy and curiosity, tempered by weariness and fear.

Hope, so much hope.

“You were never active when… before.”

“Your people did not need me,” they tilted their head, looking down at her perhaps more gently than they meant to. “Moreover, they did not _want_ me.”

“ _How_ –” she cut herself off, gaze drifting down as Atlantis rebuffed several other Ascended being from interfering as they conversed. Her fear was a palpable thing. “Can…”

Atlas waited. They were patient.

“Can you… _will_ you help me?”

They smiled down at this Third One, this Lost Child.

“All you ever had to do was ask,” they stated, holding out their hand and taking hers, letting her curl in to their chest with wet eyes. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

If even _one_ of their foolish living ones had asked for help, if they’d asked for aid as they had done so _many_ eons ago…

Well, it would be a very different present, then, wouldn’t it?

~*~

They introduced her to the children, and the same delight and wistfulness that they felt themselves was reflected in younger eyes.

Jinto, the unspoken leader of the group, pursed his lips thoughtfully with his friends before grinning and grabbing her newly solid hands. Chaya had stated that the way that the others of her kind imprisoned her kept sensation from being what it had once been. A kind of sensory deprivation, as well as limiting her extra senses as a being of Energy. Empathy stripped from her, stagnant, and alone in ways she’d never been before.

This Third One, who had asked to become Their Own again, was touch starved and out of touch with other sentients.

On her prison planet, that which was once her home world, the place of her birth and where she’d had her children, she played a part. She was both goddess and disciple, but never just Chaya Sar, the daughter who had only ever wanted to be a mother.

“Do you dance, Auntie?” the children asked eagerly, pressing little lights against Chaya’s larger, constrained one. “We’d love to dance with you! Do you know any fun ones on your world?”

More brilliantly than when she sought out some semblance of familiarity with their Sheppard, the woman smiled, tremulous and wet.

Desperate loneliness had made the woman reach out to the Descendant, begging for a connection, and the man had tried to answer even if he didn’t quite understand. He was good and kind, but he was still a child in the grand scheme of Chaya’s existence.

“I know many dances. I’ll teach them to you, if you don’t mind teaching me as well? I’m sure you know some that I don’t.”

“Of course! We’ll teach each other!”

The personal shield that they had configured for her specifications, to separate her from the interfering plane of her once siblings, was hidden in her shirt. She could not go fully into her Energy state with it in place, but she could power it on her own when separate from Atlantis. It kept her solid, and in doing so limited her mental constraints as well, but it set her heart free from its prison.

It would take time for her to heal. For Chaya Sar to let herself slip the roles she’d been playing for so long fall away.

“Am I…” her voice had been small as she spoke in their arms, Atlas humming in tune with themselves. “Am I like _them_? Am I passed the point of no return?”

Her breath hitched, and her hands had fluttered against nanocrystalline synthetic cloth, taking in the tactile sensation.

“I do not want to be like the Ori,” was her wet pleading. “I do not want to be what my ancestors fled from, feeding on the other races’ belief and mental energies like a – like a _Wraith._ ”

They were careful, but honest with their words.

“You are changed,” was said softly. “You will never be what you once were, and you don’t sing in quite the same way as you once did, but you are not yet a Devouring Existence. Your song is new and different, and yet you are still one of My Own.”

The woman, this too old child of theirs, had wept in their arms for relief and grief, and now danced merrily with children who softened the edges of her.

They were proud of her, for learning what the others had not.

~*~

“She’s not human!”

Rodney had been kicking up a fuss for a little while, and Atlas had enough issues to deal with that this one had needed to wait.

“She’s not,” they interrupted a tirade that was directed towards the beleaguered, somewhat dazed Carson. “Nor are a significant number of the people here, depending on your criterion for the honor.”

Teeth clicked together as the man’s jaw snapped shut, color blooming pointedly on his cheeks over his general flush. Sheppard looked relieved at the interruption, and Carson sent them a thankful look that spoke worlds.

“She’s an Ancient,” came the gentle doctor’s words. “Not some flesh eating bacteria, Rodney.”

“Yeah, well… What’s she been doing hanging out on a backwater primitive planet for the past ten thousand years?”

He sounded honestly flabbergasted, lost, as if someone of technological means abandoning it was anathema to him. Which it likely was.

“She was imprisoned,” Atlas spoke again, not knowing what Sheppard had been about to say, but knowing that this needed to be said. “And she now has Atlantis shielding her from the others of her kind.”

“Wh – I – Pff – How do you always _know_ these things?!”

“I ask questions,” Atlas smiled, tilting their head towards Carson as the scientist fumed indignantly. It was amusing, because that was all Rodney did, ask questions and then strive to answer them himself. “She would like to speak with the Command Staff.”

“I’m sure Elizabeth would _love_ to talk to her!” the soldier jumped up, energized by having something to do, a tinge of relief hiding behind almost disappointment inside him. “A real life Ancient that doesn’t come bearing awful tidings or to steal our shit? Fantastic!”

Humming in amusement, Atlas inclined their head before stepping out of the infirmary back towards the sound of laughter. The children had dragged some of the adult Athosians and a few Marines into their dancing games with Chaya.

Just as she had when she was a child, she was teaching them how to step on certain panels to the beat of the dance, lighting them up with music. They were delighting in it, and Aiden was having perhaps near as much fun as the actual adolescents were.

Life was growing in Atlantis’ halls again.

Roots once thought torn out were sprouting something once again, supported by new growth, and Atlas was content.

A Third One had asked for help. A Third One had asked to stay.

A Third One had _apologized_.

Now she was learning the ways of the New Ones, these potential Fourth Ones.

She had loved her planet once. Had loved the people there.

Now she couldn’t help but feel some resentment for the place that had brought her thousands of years of suffering. That had ultimately kept her from her people and any type of personal connection; that had kept her from _living_.

It wasn’t their fault, and Chaya knew this. Mourned her own emotions in this.

They didn’t deserve her wrath, but it was a cage that Atlantis did not want her to risk stepping into again. Outside of their influence she was more liable to become prey to her siblings, the other Ascended and their self-imposed rules.

Already, Atlantis had needed to flex their Existence to remind the Third Ones just _why_ they had pleaded with Atlantis to save them from the Second Ones. Reaching into the Energy of Beyond and looming with age had chastened them thoroughly, and the Wraith Hive that had been on course to lure Chaya back to her prison was rerouted.

Smiling cuttingly, Atlas walked their halls with sure steps, humming in tune with the musical steps on the other side of them.

They would defend those who came to them for shelter, for healing. Just as they always had.

Even from those who had been Their Own.


End file.
